


No Strings, No Marks

by followsrabbit



Series: soulmates [2]
Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 14:19:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9238724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followsrabbit/pseuds/followsrabbit
Summary: Every so often, Eva searched her skin for a name.





	

Every so often, Eva searched her skin for a soulmate mark.

Not as often as she once had—back when her world, romantic and social and otherwise, had revolved around Jonas, she had scoured her arms and legs and chest for some sign of a name, of him, of them. Sometimes, when she was lying in bed by herself and staring at the photos of her old friends that still hung on the wall, she would get up in the middle of the night to slant a hand mirror over her shoulder, just to make sure that ‘Jonas’ hadn’t sprouted across her upper back mid-sleep. She’d squint into the lamplight until she had no choice but to huff a sigh, drop her compact, and squirm back beneath the covers.

(If she could have found Jonas’s name on her body, then that would have meant he was her soulmate. If he was her soulmate, then she hadn’t stolen him from Ingrid at all; then her stomach could stop churning every time she crossed her former best friend in the schoolyard or the hallway or the corner of her mind.)

But, as much as she looked and looked, it never, never came.

* * *

 “It’s a scam,” Jonas told her. Sprawled on her bed, he traced his fingertips along her unmarked skin, and pulled her close until his dark curls brushed her cheek. “A way for society to tell you who you belong with. Fucking nonsense.” His mouth found hers. “We choose that, right?”

And Eva nodded her chin against his, swallowing the same skepticism that she’d gulped over his anti-capitalist, anti-russ rants. What was so wrong with having a bus, having fun. What was so wrong with having a mark, having a soulmate, having someone to belong to. “I choose you.”

* * *

 A black ballerina skirt haunted her legs, a wide mattress sunk beneath thighs, and Penetrator Chris’s lips slid against hers, surprised at first, but then firm, persistent, good. He made it easy for her to close her eyes and lose herself to his ready hands and gilded tongue. Forget the tears in her lashes and the sneer on Ingrid’s face and Jonas’s—Jonas’s—

Eva broke away, either a sob or a gasp clogging her throat.

 _"This can't happen."_ Jonas was a liar, yes, but Chris was a player and a fuckboy, and she wanted neither. She didn’t want the beer on his tongue or the haze of his grip. What she wanted was a soulmate, a partner, a promise, and the only promise she would ever get Penetrator Chris was this: that his name would never ever appear on her skin.

A second passed. The door opened. She wondered if his gorgeous second year girlfriend had a mark.

* * *

 “They don’t have to mean anything,” Noora told her sometimes, her red lips stretched and unimpressed. “It’s just a mark. Like a freckle. Something on your body that you can’t control.”

Legs dangling beside Noora’s on the schoolyard bench, Eva released a breathy laugh. “A freckle?”

Noora’s nod looked just as decisive, just as confident, as her every other move.

“Freckles aren’t romantic.”

A prod of Noora’s striped-shirt-clad shoulder against hers. “Neither are the marks.” And as Noora continued ranting about how much power the idea of soulmates had over people, how utterly misplaced it was, Eva couldn’t help but compare her reasoning to Jonas’s. Couldn’t help but wonder if Noora knew that, sometimes, she sounded just a bit too outraged for pure conviction. Like she was trying to argue the point to herself.

“See?” she finished finally with an exasperated tilt of her chin.

Eva nodded.

* * *

Tinder was stock _full_ of names.

More importantly, Tinder had names that she didn’t need to agonize over or analyze. Names that she didn’t need to search her skin for, because they didn’t have to mean anything. Dismissible names, recyclable names, _forgettable_ names.

Eva hadn’t realized exactly how obsessed she had grown with her latent mark—they could appear _any time_ during adolescence, the likelihood of twelve and twenty exactly the same, if they came at all—until she and Jonas had disentangled from her bed for the last time, but the freedom of kissing boys without a care for their names tasted like a thrill or a relief on her bruised lips.

She missed Jonas; the feeling of his hands twined with hers and the echo of his laughter on her mouth. But her smiles cost less now than they had when they were together. Waiting for Jonas’s name to manifest on her back or breast or ankle had become a kind of mania, and she liked herself better without anxious eyes.

* * *

 “You seem happier,” Chris murmured into her jaw as he pushed her out of the party and into the closest empty bedroom. The backs of her bare knees hit the full-sized, fully made bed within a few frenzied steps, and the rest of her hit the mattress one blurred second later.

She couldn’t tell whether the beer on her lips was from her drink or his, but her mind and skin felt warm with the—increasingly familiar—blend of Chris and alcohol.

“Than?” she asked with an arched, impatient eyebrow as she held him away from her for a moment. Eva hadn’t found him tonight for conversation. This was _Penetrator Chris_ —he could do a number of unfairly incredible things with his tongue, speech least among them.

He rolled his eyes, wrapped his hands around her hips, and slanted his trademark smirk at her. “Than the last time I had you in a bed.”

Eva smothered a grunt or a laugh against his lips. “I was crying the first time we kissed,” she said, tugging the hem of his black t-shirt over his head. “And you didn’t _have me in bed_. I pushed you away, remember?” She had meant to sound unaffected, but the sight of Chris’s bare, toned chest _did_ have an effect. She hated that it did, and she hated that he saw, because Chris already wore smugness like Noora applied lipstick, and the last thing he needed was a free coat of it from her.

His mouth stretched as she yanked her own shirt off with one quick pull, sending it flailing after his into a heap on the floor. One roguish smile and then his face dipped towards her breasts. “Are you going to push me away now?”

Eva’s next exhale hitched as Chris’s fingers undid the clasp of her bra and his mouth charted the heave of her chest. “Shut up.”

 *

Later, when Eva was reassembling herself into her mismatched bra and panties, Chris caught her absentminded smile with his thumb. “I like it,” he said, voice as cocky as ever, if a note huskier than usual. “Happy is hot on you.”

Eva rolled her eyes, and took a step towards her puddled shirt. “Bye, Chris.”

* * *

 She never looked for a name on Chris’s skin, but Eva couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t have a mark. Not that she’d seen, and she _would_ have seen by now. Chris had to have noticed that she was similarly unmarked, but he didn’t comment on it either, much to her relief. She liked their friendship and its benefits and their banter. Heartfelt talk about soulmate marks had no place among the bruises his fingertips left on her hips and the heat his mouth trailed along her curves. It didn’t match the smirks he’d give her any more than it meshed with her eye-roll replies.

The first time soulmates did come up, his breath _reeked_ of liquor. William and Noora had just left for London the morning before, and Chris’s lips and hands felt more desperate on her body than they usually did—his teeth nipping her lower lip and her jaw and her neck; his hands beneath her shirt before they’d made it to the nearest wall, let alone a bedroom.

Eva wasn’t much better. Easier to go straight for the alcohol, and then directly for the first boy she could find, than admit how much it fucking sucked to lose her best friend to another country.

And she _had_ found a boy, not ten minutes after stumbling into the party, more than a bit tipsy from the bottles of wine she and Vilde had shared at pre’s. Not Chris, but someone stockier and softer and younger and all too happy to let Eva lean a bit too close to his chest and laugh a bit too much at his jokes as she waited for him to realize that she had _no interest_ in talking.

One minute, she’d been a step away from kissing him.

The next, Chris was standing between them, an arm hooked around her shoulders, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that he’d come to a ’99 party, when he could have gone anywhere. The most natural thing in the world for him to say, “Ready to go, babe?” with a look towards the door.

In spite of herself, Eva made a confused noise as she wrinkled her forehead and relaxed against his side.

Skepticism, apparently, was not the answer he was seeking. Ignoring the nameless boy who had already begun to shuffle away, Chris brought his half-empty beer to her lips, and poured gulp after gulp down her throat until it disappeared altogether.

Eva coughed, raised a hand to wipe the froth from her mouth, and curled her tongue to demand  _what the hell_ , but Chris beat her to action and speech. He stole the splattered beer from her lips and the letters from her mouth and the protest from her throat. He kissed her in all of the ways that he _knew_ undid her, pilfering breath after breath from her chest until she had her hands clawing at his hair and her hips flush against his.

His hands skimmed the bare skin between her shirt and her skirt as she pulled away for a breath. “My house is empty for the weekend.”

Eva nodded.

 *

Eva stared at Chris’s ceiling, wondering when she should leave. They had an unspoken arrangement—for all the times they’d hooked up in each other’s beds, they never actually fell asleep. The idea of waking up next to Chris in the morning, of navigating hangovers and morning light under his smirking scrutiny had never seemed worth the trouble.

Eva meant to say: ‘I should go.’

But as she blinked at the white paint chipping along the walls, her limbs tired and her head still slightly foggy with white wine and cheap beer, she heard herself say instead, “I miss Noora.”

She tilted her head, flattening one cheek against a flat pillow. Chris lay on his back, his teeth working across his lower lip in thought. The silence that followed, the gulp she filled it with, felt too thick.

“Soulmates fucking change everything,” he said finally, voice hard and shoulders slumped.

Eva blinked. “Noora and William are…” It shouldn’t have surprised her. Noora had never said they weren’t, never said that she didn’t have a mark—only that she would never _choose_ someone because of an 'utterly arbitrary name.' 

Chris didn’t look at her. “He’s had her name on his chest for years.”

More silence, more tension.

“I used to want a mark more than anything,” Eva admitted, because the words were itching in her throat, and she needed them out. Never mind that Chris was her audience. Never mind that she wasn’t supposed to show him these younger pieces of herself. The conversation had already turned deeper than they ever let it, and the next day was already going to be uncomfortable as hell. “Stupid.”

“Fucking stupid,” Chris drawled in agreement.

Eva’s lips went through the motions of his favorite smirk. “One girl isn’t enough for the great Chris Schistad?”

Chris found a breath of laughter at first, and then her lips. "Want to try to change my mind?"

* * *

And maybe soulmates weren't for Chris, maybe one girl wasn't enough--but she was the only one he ever seemed to leave parties with now, and on the nights when she didn't go out, he seemed to climb through her window more and more often. Eva knew he missed William, that he was bored and lonely without his best friend, but... 

She couldn't remember the last time that she had left a party with anyone else either. 

* * *

They didn’t talk about soulmates again after that, and that was just fine with Eva. Not because she agreed with Jonas that the marks were meaningless, but because they meant _too_ much. A soulmate had sounded like a fix-it, a security blanket once. Now it sounded like _way more than she wanted to deal with._

Which was why, now, as she laughed with Chris among the holiday decorations at Noora’s flat, she ignored the fact that a name had appeared on the back of her neck that morning. The music was cheery, all her friends were here, and Chris tasted like sugar cookies and spiked cider. Right now, she would rather have the moment than a mark.

(She had caught a flash of the mark in the mirror earlier.) (She hadn’t read it yet.)

Chris’s grin when she tilted her chin up to his ear to whisper, _My mom is away for the next few days_ , felt so much more real than the letters scribbled behind her hair.

 


End file.
